During Ramadan, Muslims fast from dawn until dusk, after which they eat and many
enjoy television shows made especially for the holiday.
Arab TV satellite
channels are airing a series this year called Khaybar, referring to the Muslim
massacre of the Jews of the town of that name in northwestern Arabia in 628
CE.
After the attack, some Muslims, including Muhammad, took surviving
women as wives.
The Muslim conquerors charged the Jews a 50 percent tax
on their crops and in 637, after Muhammad’s death, the Caliph Omar expelled the
remaining Jews from Khaybar.
In Islamic tradition, the chant “Khaybar
Khaybar, ya yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud,” which means, “Jews, remember
Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning,” is used as a battle cry when
attacking Jews or Israelis.
It was, for example, chanted on the Mavi
Marmara Gaza flotilla ship in May 2010.
The show deals with the
relationship between the Jews and the Arab tribes of Medina as well as between
the Jews of Medina and Khaybar, MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute)
reported on Wednesday. One Arab media outlet described the film as demonstrating
the Jews’ “hostility toward others, their treacherous nature, and their repeated
betrayals.”
The plot deals with Jews asking Miqdad, an Arab warrior, to
fight for them; he refuses to kill women and children and is sent to prison.
Another episode, based on Islamic tradition, involves a Jewish woman whose
father and brother were killed by Muslims and who tries to get revenge by
attempting to poison the prophet.
The film was produced by Echo Media, a
Qatari company owned by Hashem al-Sayed.
The show is set to air on
channels such as Dubai TV, Dream TV (Egypt), Al-Iraqiyya TV, Algerian Channel 3,
Atlas TV (Algeria), Qatar TV and UAE TV, according to the MEMRI
report.
Sameh al-Sereity, one of the main actors in the show, plays
Muhammad ibn Maslamah, the bodyguard of the prophet Muhammad. Sereity told an
Egyptian newspaper the show portrays the evolution of Jews’ hatred of
others.
“The hostility between us and the Jews still exists. The hatred
is ingrained. Neither Egyptians nor Arabs need this show to justify their hatred
of Zionism. The existing struggles between us provide the simplest proof of
this,” he said.
Another actor, Ahmad Abd al-Halim, said, “I play one of
the Jewish characters, who demonstrates the behavior of the Jewish human being.
All he thinks about is accumulating money.”
The show’s screenwriter,
Yusri al-Gindi, said in an interview with Al Jazeera about the series, “The Jews
are the Jews. They still act according to their nature, despite the passing
generations. They corrupt any society in which they live, and therefore no
regime can protect them with any contract or agreement.
The crisis in the
Arab world offers the best proof of this, and this is where the show gets its
current relevance.”
He added, “It happened in Babylon, Rome, Imperial
Russia and Hitler’s Germany. Later, the West banished them to the Arab region,
where they continue to serve it [the West] to this day.”